After a successful inaugural championship, the NIT of college golf is returning this May at Ak-Chin Southern Dunes in Maricopa, Arizona. Last year, the Texas State men and Penn State women won their respective tournaments.
The NCAA announced in May of 2022 it would allow teams to play in one season-ending event. Golfweek teamed up with Ak-Chin Southern Dunes, just south of Phoenix, to host the NGI.
This year, the NGI will again feature a men’s and women’s championship, each with a maximum of 18 teams playing 54 holes of stroke play. Women will play first, May 9-12, with the men the following week, May 16-19.
There were 13 men’s teams and 10 women’s teams who participated last year, and more teams are expected to play this May. The field is limited to 18 teams using rankings and committee picks.
The NGI gives teams on the outside of the NCAA postseason a chance to have a season-ending championship of their own.
Texas State capped off its season with a third team title.
From where Shane Howell was sitting, Sunday at the National Golf Invitational felt like the Kentucky Derby.
“Somehow, some way we ended up on top of the board,” said Howell, head coach at Texas State.
Scoring swings are a reality of college golf, but the final round at Ak-Chin Southern Dunes in Maricopa, Arizona, was something else entirely. Five teams landed within two shots of each other at the top of the leaderboard with Texas State, at 7 under for the week, narrowly beating Penn State and Wyoming, who tied for second at 6 under. Ball State and Stetson tied for fourth at 5 under. All five teams had the lead at some point on Sunday.
Howell normally isn’t a serial Golfstat refresher while he coaches, but Sunday was a different story. Howell checked the leaderboard after the first six holes to find his counters 9 over for the day. He checked it again after 12 holes and saw the beginning of a comeback.
Howell went to work on the par-5 16th hole, which Texas State played in 2 under thanks to birdies from Marcelo Garza and Jack Burke. Howell’s assistant Logan Davis was up ahead at the par-3 17th where the team struggled, counting two bogeys and a double and losing their lead to Wyoming.
By the time Garza, in Texas State’s anchor position, was standing over his approach at the par-4 18th, Howell was next to him. Garza hit his drive right into some high brush but got free relief from an old sprinkler head and punched down the fairway to 90 yards.
“I met him down there,” Howell said. “He said, ‘Hey, where do we stand?’ I said, ‘Bogey gets us the title.’ So he hit it up on the middle of the green about 35 feet and two-putted.”
Ball State was one of those teams circling the lead and while the Cardinals ultimately came up two shots short of Texas State, sophomore Kash Bellar became the inaugural NGI champion.
Every time Bellar saw Ball State head coach Mike Fleck on the course on Sunday, he asked for a status report.
“He would just tell us, ‘Hey, we’re ok, doing alright, falling behind,’” Bellar said.
Bellar’s final-round card wasn’t flashy – he made three birdies and three bogeys for an even-par 72 that left him with a one-shot win at 7 under. He managed birdie on the driveable par-4 14th from a greenside bunker, which gave him a big momentum boost and then sealed the title by rolling in a 15-footer straight uphill for birdie on the par-4 closing hole.
The NGI title marks Bellar’s first college title, and his first win in golf since the 2021 Indiana High School State Championship.
“I’ve been close a lot this spring,” Bellar said. “It was really nice to get it done this week.”
Being the first is especially sweet, and something Bellar had just begun to think about after the conclusion of the tournament even though the possibility had crossed his lips before he ever traveled with the team to Arizona.
“I forget which buddy I told,” Bellar said. “I was telling him that this is the first time there has ever been an NIT for golf. How would it be to be the first one to win it?”
Texas State will process that, too. The NGI is the team’s third title this season, which is an exceptional number for a team that struggled with injury as much as the Bobcats did. At some point during the year, three of Howell’s five starters were out with injury. That includes Garza, who played the first tournament of the year, sat out the rest of the fall with a wrist injury and didn’t start playing again until January. That made it fitting for Garza to be the one to clinch the NGI title.
“They’ve had a great year,” Howell said. “We felt grateful all week to be there because we felt like we’ve had a good year and for Lance (Ringler, of Golfweek) to host this tournament was really kind of a second life for us. They took advantage of it.”
Like a lot of teams, Texas State felt like it had some unfinished business after the Sun Belt Conference Championship, especially after a disappointing final round that left them short of the conference match-play bracket.
“We were really grateful to have another chance to come and play,” Howell said.
Before they arrived in the Arizona desert, Howell spoke to his team about turning the NGI into a springboard to the next level. A wild Sunday afternoon leaderboard seems like ample preparation for anything next season could throw at Texas State.
“We feel like we’re a regional team,” Howell said, “so we’re like this week kind of starts our climb into next year. We kind of used that as motivation getting ready for the tournament. Win, lose or draw, we were just going to try to make sure we finished on a good note.”
After a hard day of work in the desert, Joe Jensen took his Wyoming team to the shade of a nearby tree and let them take a breath of relief. The second round of the National Golf Invitational at Ak-Chin Southern Dunes in Maricopa, Arizona, was a battle for the Cowboys. Jensen wanted his men to know he was proud of the fight.
“I am proud of my group because I know we slipped, and for them to fight back the bulk of the day, which they did a great job of, and so as a coach that makes me proud,” he said. “Because as I told them, their attitude stayed the same, they were still engaged, we didn’t get off to the best start but we kept fighting and fighting.”
Wyoming started the day with a one-shot lead and ended it four shots behind second-round leader Texas State. Oh, but the second round of the inaugural NGI was so much more complicated than that.
As the day wore on, seven different teams rotated through the lead. On a day like this, every shot counts, and Wyoming had to truly grind.
“There were a lot of hard-fought pars on par 5s, and the strategy,” Jensen said, “and I could go on and on and on about the thought process of gosh, let’s just make par on this and get out of here.”
To Jensen, playing for the inaugural NGI title is an “unbelievable” feeling – so much so that he knows he’ll have to work not to betray the process that helped get his team to this point. Don’t expect Jensen’s enthusiasm level to change or his team’s morning routines to waiver.
Like Jensen, Texas State head coach Shane Howell liked the fight he saw in his team, particularly on the back nine. The Bobcats turned around a shaky opening stretch and went 11 under coming in to take the lead.
“Proud of the guys for hanging in there after an up-and-down front nine today,” he said. “It allowed them to come home strong on the back nine and give them a chance tomorrow.
“We are so grateful for the opportunity to be at the NGI and the guys are looking forward to the final round tomorrow.”
On Sunday, Utah Valley will join Wyoming and Texas State in the final grouping. The Wolverines, at 5 under, trail by six. Head coach Chris Curran’s squad has had a lot of experience in that position this season, having won three tournaments in the spring season.
“I think our message is just going to be, hey you’re not sleeping with the lead, you’ve got no pressure, let’s come out firing tomorrow and try to go shoot the lowest score that we can and count them up at the end,” he said.
In a lot of ways, this Utah Valley team has shattered the norms for Wolverine golf. Brady McKinlay won four individual titles in a row in the fall and qualified for an NCAA regional, making him ineligible to compete this week. Caden Weber won the Bash at the Beach in March. Curran thinks the whole roster fed off those performances – particularly McKinlay’s stretch.
“They practice with him and play with him every day and see what he’s doing and they’re like, well I can hang with him,” Curran said. “It really elevated the expectation level of everybody else.”
For the first time in a decade coaching Utah Valley, Curran thinks any guy in the starting five could win the individual title if he gets hot. This week, Curran is discovering just how deep his roster goes with McKinlay out as well as Kai Iguchi, who competed in the PGA WORKS Individual Collegiate Championship.
“It’s kind of like a new crew for us,” Curran said. “We were joking around a little bit saying this is the first qualifier for next year just with who we’ve brought.”
Utah Valley’s NGI lineup includes redshirt freshman Braden O’Grady, who has never teed it up in competition with the Wolverines before this week. O’Grady transferred to Utah Valley in December after a year at Western Washington and was just outside the traveling squad throughout the spring season.
“He never really got a chance to get into the lineup and then kind of with how things have transpired, we were like, we’ve got to get this kid some reps,” Curran said. “He’s come in and done a great job for us.”
Utah Valley is on track to break its program scoring record at the NGI this week, which is just another line in a historic season.
This is Utah Valley’s first postseason appearance, and they’re drawing some inspiration – and competition – from the men’s basketball program. In March, the Wolverines advanced to the semifinals of the National Invitational Tournament, the event comparable to the NGI in men’s golf.
“We’re now kind of joking that well, we have to do better than our basketball team did,” Curran said. “We have to go win this thing.”
There isn’t much breathing room on the first-round leaderboard at the National Golf Invitational.
There isn’t much breathing room on the first-round leaderboard at the National Golf Invitational. Even as Wyoming finished the day 8 under at Ak-Chin Southern Dunes in Maricopa, Arizona, the Cowboys only gave themselves a one-shot cushion on Penn State.
The top nine spots on the leaderboard are separated by seven shots. Stetson, in 11th place at 2 over, is only 10 shots off the pace. And for a program that lives in the red, 10 shots is very much in the conversation.
The Hatters have never competed in the postseason before this year. Second-year head coach Danny Forshey has pushed a competitive culture back home in Daytona Beach, Florida, and it carried his team all the way to the desert.
Forshey, who previously coached at Appalachian State, Bethune-Cookman and Alcorn State, took inventory when he arrived two years ago. He brought in five new players this season to blend with the roster already in place. Then it became a birdie fest – all the time.
“We had a super competitive qualifying every time we qualified, and it was tough to get in the lineup,” Forshey said. “It forced guys to get better and shoot lower scores.”
Most of the time, it took rounds in the 60s, or at least under par, to get a seat in the team van. Some players didn’t get to compete in tournaments as much as they’d hoped, Forshey said, but the outcome was that competition sharpened the whole roster, top to bottom.
It showed in the fall.
Stetson was runner-up at three fall tournaments and won its own Daytona Beach Intercollegiate. Remarkably, the Hatters were under par as a team in each of 15 fall tournament rounds. After the first half of the season, Stetson was ranked No. 55 in the Golfweek/Sagarin College Rankings. The team had as strong a fall season as any program in the 13-team NGI field.
“We have a special group now,” Forshey said, “this is by far the most special team I’ve been a part of.”
Opportunity begets opportunity, and a first foray into the postseason could conceivably open even more doors for Stetson. Forshey said his men are learning on the fly at Ak-Chin Southern Dunes. He has emphasized driving the ball well and playing for the first bounce on firm, desert greens.
Mason Quagliata knows all about it, having grown up in nearby Scottsdale, Arizona. Quagliata brought in a bogey-free, 4-under 68 to lead Stetson on Friday and is tied for third individually. Wyoming’s Tyler Severin has the individual lead at 6 under.
“I got off to a really good start, started birdie-birdie, so that always helps get into the flow of things,” Quagliata said. “And then the putter felt really good. Just felt like I got it in all the right spots, was getting up and down when I needed to and just felt like I was capitalizing on all the right opportunities.”
Quagliata, a redshirt junior, has never played a college event in his home state. Already this week, he’s had his teammates to his house and taken them to his home golf course.
As an upperclassmen, Quagliata has seen both the pre-Forshey era of Stetson golf and the post-era. If you weren’t working hard, Quagliata said of the new climate, you weren’t going to play.
“We definitely all got more comfortable under par when scores like that are being shot in qualifying because then you come out to a tournament and it’s not as big a deal to shoot under par when you’re doing it every time at your home course,” he said.
When he went through the recruiting process, Quagliata wasn’t much concerned with postseason. He wanted to go to a school where he could play and get better, but this week is a nice bonus.
Forshey is proud of the buy-in from players like Quagliata as well as new recruits who believed in what could be accomplished at Stetson. The NGI is a big step forward in the program’s progression.
“I think the thing that’s fun for us is this was an idea, it was a dream and it was just a thought a year or so ago,” Forshey said. “We tried to put a plan together to get a group of guys together that want to compete and can compete. Not everybody is interested in being a part of that because sometimes that means you might not get to play as much.
“We put together a special group and all the guys bought in. We’re an underdog story.”
“Our guys are excited that they get to go play in a postseason event.”
MARICOPA, Ariz. — Last week, the inaugural National Golf Invitational came to life.
Think NIT of college golf. Every team’s goal is to make it to the NCAA Championship, but sometimes there are teams eligible for NCAA Regionals that don’t get selected.
For some teams, like Arkansas State, it’s an opportunity for a postseason appearance and invaluable experience.
“If you look at college golf, especially in 2023, it’s as deep as it has ever been,” Arkansas State coach Mike Hagan said. “So if you just missed out on making regionals, that doesn’t mean you had a bad year. (The NGI) is a big deal for us.”
A look at the pin flag at Ak-Chin Southern Dunes, site of the 2023 National Golf Invitational. (Photo: Cameron Jourdan/Golfweek)
The Red Wolves are one of 13 teams competing on the men’s side in a field that includes Power 5 programs and mid-majors. The Penn State men are also in the field and will look to complete a sweep this week.
Wyoming coach Joe Jenson said having another postseason event will benefit college golf in the long run, too. He uses Colorado as an example, which got into regionals while being near the cut off and played its way into the NCAA Championship.
“We competed very closely with them all year, and it benefited us seeing their success,” Jenson said. “There’s just enough good teams that aren’t selection for regionals, so I can’t say enough about what this event means for players and us coaches.”
Checking in with Coach Jensen as the Cowboys prepare to compete in the Inaugural Golfweek NIT! 🤠⛳️ pic.twitter.com/710Z8VCX3q
On Thursday, windy conditions swept Ak-Chin Southern Dunes as teams paraded around the golf course getting last-minute preparations in. For some players, it would be their final college golf tournament. For others, the NGI could provide important postseason experience and lead to a jump start into their next season.
College golf’s new postseason event is here. And it’s something that’s only going to grow and provide championship opportunities for numerous schools worthy of hoisting a trophy.
“Our guys are excited that they get to go play in a postseason event,” Hagen said. “We get to maybe win a championship that not a lot of people get a chance to.”
“We felt like we had a team, and were playing with some momentum, that was capable of winning.”
Mike Fleck, the longtime men’s golf coach at Ball State, has been talking about Golfweek’s National Golf Invitational all spring. As he coached his players over the .500 hurdle, he wanted them to understand what opportunities lay on the other side.
Postseason eligibility, for the NCAA and NGI, is contingent upon a team finishing the regular season with a winning record. The NGI decided to adopt that same postseason guideline to stay consistent regarding a team playing after its conference championship. Fleck spoke to his men frequently about the importance of getting into a postseason-eligible position, especially now that a new opportunity is on the table. The NGI debuts this year at Ak-Chin Southern Dunes in Maricopa, Arizona.
Ball State wasn’t far off the .500 mark after the first half of the season, but their spring slate was no cakewalk. After winning the Butler Invitational on March 28, Ball State ran the Power 5 gauntlet in April.
“We played in Vanderbilt’s event, which was a really strong field,” he said. “We played in Purdue’s event, which had Oklahoma and a handful of Big 10 teams and was a strong field. We played at Illinois and they had five or six Big 10 teams and it was a strong field.
“The challenge was there for us to try to get that thing north of .500. We kind of held serve at several of those events.”
Ball State enters the NGI ranked No. 132 in the Golfweek/Sagarin College Rankings, but landed at No. 97 in Golfweek’s spring-only rankings.
The big test, and ultimately the performance that secured an NGI bid for Ball State, came at the Mid-American Conference Championship. A win would send the team to NCAA regionals as an Automatic Qualifier, but the Cardinals needed to be third or better to be postseason eligible. Fleck laid out both scenarios plainly.
“We felt like we had a team, and were playing with some momentum, that was capable of winning,” he said.
The 2023 Ball State men’s golf team. (Photo: Ball State Athletics)
Ball State worked its way up from seventh after the first round to second and in the final round, paired with Kent State and Northern Illinois, the Cardinals held their position. The AQ went to Northern Illinois, and that was still a tough pill for Ball State to swallow. An NGI bid made it go down easier.
“It’s exciting and it’s something that college golf has needed for quite some time now to match up with our peer sports at the college level,” Fleck said of the NGI debut. “For us to be a part of the inaugural event I think is pretty special. I think it carries a little bit more weight and meaning any time you’re the first to do something and being involved with this event is definitely something we’re excited about and looking forward to the opportunity.”
Fleck last took a team to the postseason in 2013, when Ball State was assigned to an NCAA regional in Pullman, Washington. They advanced to the NCAA Championship after winning a sudden death playoff with San Diego State.
Fleck has employed much the same gameplan for preparation a decade later, dispatching his players to compete in some independent events now that the semester is over. Two of the top three spots in the Indianapolis Open went to Ball State players, with a third finishing T-15, and fifth-year senior Joey Ranieri won a U.S. Open local qualifier in Cincinnati.
Expect Ball State to hit the ground running at Ak-Chin Southern Dunes.
“It would be cool to be the first,” Fleck said. “That’s what’s pretty special about this event this year.”
Likewise, Washington State wasn’t ready to be done after a historic run at the Pac-12 Championship last month. So while senior Pono Yanagi played an NCAA regional in Morgan Hill, California, this week as an individual, finishing T-32, his teammates back home continued to prepare for the NGI.
“I think the rest of the guys want to play more golf as well,” White said. “We want to be playing in a regional ourselves, but I think this is a good first step and a taste of the postseason. It’s an opportunity to showcase what our guys are capable of.”
Washington State would need the NCAA to grant Yanagi a waiver to play with his team at the NGI after already competing in a regional. White said that hasn’t come through, so the Washington State lineup was in a bit of limbo mid-week.
Still, the energy is good as the Cougars continue to work out, play qualifying rounds and hone in on areas of their game Ak-Southern Dunes will test.
The Cougars could arrive in Arizona with some serious wind in their sails after finishing third at Pac-12s. Washington State gave a gutsy performance after starting their weeks with their backs against a wall, needing a fifth-place finish or better to be postseason eligible.
White likens the conference championship to the season-opening Husky Invitational, which his team rallied to win. The focus at Pac 12s wasn’t to squeak out a top 5, but rather to attack the day, play the golf course and see what happens.
“You never know in a six-count-five-format,” White said of Pac-12s. “That’s kind of a different animal. Our guys really stepped up and the fight they showed was really special to watch. We had some moments where it really could have gone sideways but they just hung in there and played some really nice golf.
“We got paired with Arizona State and Stanford. They kind of got a front-row seat to what some of these other teams are like and how they’re built, and they stood tall and they played their own game and we walked out of there with a great finish.”
Now it’s time to stride right into the postseason.
Ball State and Washington State will join 11 other schools from 12 different states in this first-year postseason event that is expected to grow in popularity in coming years.
Penn State will announce Denise St. Pierre’s retirement today after 31 years at the helm of the women’s golf team. She went out in style.
Penn State will announce Denise St. Pierre’s retirement today after 31 years at the helm of the women’s golf team. On Sunday, in a bit of incredible timing, St. Pierre managed to slip one final, monumental line onto her career resume: that of national champion.
Penn State won the first National Golf Invitational in history on May 14 by holding off a charge from Iowa over the closing stretch at Ak-Chin Southern Dunes in Maricopa, Arizona. St. Pierre, 61, gave a masterclass in knowing your players – one that arguably began in August.
St. Pierre didn’t want her team to hear from outside voices that this would be her final year coaching, so she decided to tell them herself. She punctuated the announcement with a clear request not to dwell on her farewell season. There would be no celebrating coach’s last this and final that.
It’s possible, St. Pierre said, that her retirement motivated her team at the NGI, but more probable, in her mind, is that they had their own goals to accomplish. Penn State finished a disappointing 12th at the Big 10 Conference Championship and narrowly missed making regionals as a team (qualifying Mathilde Delavallade, however, as an individual).
St. Pierre also kept the creation of the NGI to herself until the season had played out, wanting her players to be striving for what they had always been striving for since the beginning: an NCAA berth.
But having the NGI to extend their season? “I can’t tell you what it means,” St. Pierre said, “especially to my players who are leaving.”
St. Pierre is an early riser and a morning planner on tournament days, and she did it one last time before Sunday’s final round. Penn State had a five-shot lead on Santa Clara with 18 holes to play.
“I always reflect on, what do they need at this point in time?” St. Pierre said. “Something that just kept repeating over and over in my head was, ‘Nothing different, Denise.’”
As Iowa, who had started the day in third, made a charge midway through the round, closing the gap to two shots late in the back nine, St. Pierre again made a conscious effort to be who she has been all season with her players and not to change tactics with the heightened stakes. St. Pierre admits to feeling her insides churning at times.
When Drew Nienhaus drove it in the bunker on the par-5 16th then successfully got out and hit her approach to 6 feet for birdie, the gap widened a little more in Penn State’s favor. After that, Isha Dhruva stuck her approach at the par-3 17th for birdie. In the anchor spot, Michelle Cox drilled her second shot to 8 feet on the par-5 16th and made eagle.
Knowing how much to tell each player is one of the nuances St. Pierre has mastered nearly four decades into this career.
“I think each one of them handles things a little differently,” she said. “You have to know your players to know when to say something to them and let them be who they are.”
Penn State’s 5-over final round was the best team score on Sunday. The Nittany Lions finished the week at 15 over with Iowa at 25 over. Mercer was third another shot back.
A lot of coaches, Dhruva noted, are serious on the golf course. They give yardages and back off.
“Coach does that, but she also makes sure we’re smiling and we’re laughing,” she said. “I know if I see her on a tee box, I’m able to make a joke or two, even if I had a bad hole before or a really good hole before, and that’s something I very much appreciate in a coach.”
Jokes aside, St. Pierre admitted to not having much in her long career to which she could compare this situation. Sometimes she felt she had to control her own nerves just as much as her players had to control theirs.
For Megan Menzel, Iowa’s head women’s coach, a final-round pairing beside St. Pierre and Penn State was big. Through the years, St. Pierre’s teams, she said, have shown up with sharp short games and a loads of heart.
“She brings so much to our coaching group,” Menzel said. “We talk a lot about empowering young women and I’ve just always seen that from her teams. . . . She walks around that golf course and just expects them to compete and really pulls that out of them. I’ve just admired that.”
Menzel credited her team for putting heat on the Nittany Lions down the stretch, and sees this experience as going a long way for a young squad. The Hawkeyes have only ever been to the postseason one time before this week – in the 1990s when they won their conference championship and an automatic qualifying spot.
“I think there’s a lot of really good teams that get left out of regionals, so I think that for us to be able to highlight these really strong teams and good players, I think it’s just an invaluable opportunity,” Menzel said.
Iowa freshman Shannyn Vogler.
Iowa freshman Shannyn Vogler will take home the inaugural NGI individual title after a 5-under total for 54 holes. Vogler went 3 under on the front nine and leapfrogged Penn State’s Cox when Cox took a triple bogey on the final hole.
Dhruva can’t remember a time when she has laughed harder with a group of people than this week at Ak-Chin Southern Dunes. She’s one of three seniors leaving Penn State alongside St. Pierre, and won’t ever forget standing in the 18th fairway on Sunday, watching fellow senior Sarah Willis putt out ahead of her.
Dhruva and her teammates like to joke with St. Pierre that they’re “her last and favorite team.” It’s special, she said, to have the kind of bond that she and her teammates had with St. Pierre.
“She’s definitely nurtured us in more ways than just being a golfer – in being better students and better people, and I couldn’t ask for a better person to guide me throughout my college career.”
Cox went from off the tee sheet to first one at-bat, hitting the historic first shot. She didn’t think about the significance until later.
Let the record show that Michelle Cox, a Penn State sophomore, struck the opening tee shot in the inaugural round of the National Golf Invitational on May 12. That’s particularly notable considering that Cox had barely been in the field 12 hours.
All spring, Penn State has traveled with a squad of six players. Cox was often the sixth, but she made all seven starts with the team in the second half of the season – most notably in the Big 10 Championship, a play-six-count-four format. So when Penn State’s leading scorer Mathilde Delavallade was out of the five-woman NGI lineup at the last minute, Cox suited up at Ak-Chin Southern Dunes in Maricopa, Arizona.
Delavallade and Penn State head coach Denise St. Pierre had made the trip to Arizona straight from Athens, Georgia, where Delavallade had competed as an individual in an NCAA regional. Meanwhile, they waited for an NCAA waiver that would allow Delavallade to tee it up with her team in another postseason event, the inaugural NGI.
St. Pierre had told Cox to be ready, in case that waiver didn’t come through. Cox found out shortly after the team practice round that it hadn’t.
“When I found out that Mat is not playing and I’m up,” she said, “it was go-time.”
So Cox went from off the tee sheet to first one at-bat on Friday morning, thus hitting the historic first shot. She didn’t think about the significance until later.
Maricopa, Ariz.; Penn State sophomore Michelle Cox with an opening round 5-under 67 in the inaugural National Golf Invitational (Photo by Landon Ringler)
“I mean it’s pretty cool. I hit a decent drive too,” she said, noting that it wasn’t in the fairway but still “totally fine.”
From there, Cox went on a heater, making her first of four birdies at the par-4 second. She was in between clubs at the par-3 sixth but made a confident swing and picked up another birdie. She went for the green in two at the par-5 seventh and chipped in there for eagle.
“Those two holes were just a huge momentum swing going forward and I got really comfortable on the course after that,” she said, noting that she was much more relaxed on the first tee at Ak-Chin Southern Dunes than she normally might be at tournaments.
Pretty cool “Player / Coach” Hospitality at the National Golf Invitational, presented by @golfweek at @AkChin_SoDunes Ice cream, ping pong, corn hole, VIP couches, music and more pic.twitter.com/WYWNsvhTvo
Cox had two more birdies on the back and closed with a bogey for an opening 5-under 67. She leads Mikayla Dubnik of Mercer and Elizabeth Lohbauer of Western Carolina by one shot in the individual race. Penn State, with an even-par team total, is one ahead of Iowa after 18 holes.
“All of the preparation all spring I was thankful for today because I was ready to go,” said Cox, whose best finish was a T-27 at the Lady Buckeye Invitational in April.
Friday’s performance was hardly surprising to St. Pierre, who was well aware of Cox’s capabilities.
“It was not like putting someone in who had not played at all,” she noted. “She’s a competitor, she’s very gritty, she loves to be out there and be part of the team and competing. I’m not surprised at all what happened today.”
Cox’s round went a long way in Penn State’s rise up the leaderboard. Ak-Chin Southern Dunes requires a focus on targets – off the tee as well as into greens – which was a major talking point during the team’s practice round.
“I think we made a good execution of the game plan that we talked about yesterday,” St. Pierre said.
As for Delavallade, who finished T-43 individually in Athens to miss advancing to the NCAA Championship, this week offers a little different perspective, too.
“She’s been a great support for her teammates,” said St. Pierre.
The NGI bid came a little unexpectedly for Western Carolina.
Madison Isaacson will be roughly 2,000 miles from Cullowhee, North Carolina, by the time undergraduate commencement services begin at Western Carolina University on May 13. Isaacson, a fifth-year senior, earned a double major in sport management and business administration/law and a minor in marketing, but she won’t walk for her diploma. She has one last golf tournament to play.
When Western Carolina head coach Courtney Gunter found out the Catamounts had qualified for the inaugural Golfweek National Golf Invitational, a 54-hole postseason event similar to the National Invitational Tournament in college basketball, Isaacson was her first call. She wasn’t sure Isaacson would want to forfeit that rite of passage, but Isaacson hardly flinched.
“Graduation or playing in this first tournament in Arizona?” Isaacson said. “This is cooler, for me at least.”
Isaacson goes straight from the NGI at Ak-Chin Southern Dunes in Maricopa, Arizona, to a summer job in Pinehurst, North Carolina. From there, she’ll join the women’s golf coaching staff at Gardner-Webb University as a graduate assistant. Playing the inaugural NGI will go right into her coaching toolkit as something she could perhaps use to help motivate her future players.
“This is something they can reach for,” she said.
The NGI bid came a little unexpectedly for Western Carolina players, who thought they were too low in the rankings (No. 111 in the Golfweek/Sagarin rankings) to qualify. But as soon as Gunter learned her team was in, she started calling down her roster. If you’re over it, she said, the season can end now.
“Every single one of them was like, ‘No, coach, let’s do it. That’s what we were working for, we want to go, we’re not done yet,’” Gunter remembered.
Gunter thinks she probably first found out about the National Golf Invitational on Twitter, and it was always in the back of her mind after that.
Western Carolina’s Madison Isaacson. (Photo: Charlie Bulla)
Western Carolina started the fall with a goal to be in the top 3 in the season-long Southern Conference rankings. Then the Catamounts won their first three tournaments of the fall season, and suddenly goals shifted – especially the one at the top of the page.
“After our fall, with it being so good and us having a decent ranking, our vision now is to make it to postseason, which was really cool for us to do that,” Gunter said.
After Western Carolina’s first two team wins, they were ranked inside the top 100 in the country. Gunter knew that, especially once the spring started, if her team didn’t keep winning, their ranking would likely fall. The Catamounts won their last regular-season tournament but finished third at the Southern Conference Championship. Furman won the Automatic Qualifying spot into NCAA regionals, but Western Carolina players still got a big confidence boost from their performance.
“This year, going into it,” Gunter said, “they knew they were a team that could win.”
That hasn’t been the case the past two seasons, when Western Carolina was eighth and then sixth at conference, and that’s why Gunter’s players were eager for a shot at postseason.
“I feel like they probably felt like they could have done so much more, they were still hungry for it,” Gunter said.
It’s getting more difficult each year for mid-majors to compete with Power 5 teams, and is especially difficult to earn an at-large bid to get into the postseason. Western Carolina hasn’t won its conference AQ since 2007.
The NGI presents a new carrot at the end of the season, however, and Gunter, who competed at the NCAA Women’s Championship twice as a player for the University of North Carolina, knows you can’t understand the postseason until you’ve seen the postseason.
“Most of the teams in this event we haven’t seen all year,” Gunter said of the 10-team NGI field. “It’s a lot of teams with rankings just as good or higher than ours. It’s going to be good experience regardless. It is a postseason event so it’s elevated.”
Once Western Carolina was in the field, it took some additional fundraising to make postseason a reality. As Julie Miller, Western Carolina’s Associate AD for Development and the sport supervisor for the golf programs, put it, how could you tell this team no?
“You play and you compete, you play collegiate sports to win so this is just that next step of winning,” Miller said.
No golf team in Western Carolina history has won more tournaments in a season than this one, which has brought some awareness around campus. Chancellor Kelli Brown even made time for an NGI sendoff so the seniors could get a picture with her in their caps and gowns.
Earlier in the schoolyear, the Catamounts men’s basketball team competed in the Collegiate Basketball Invitational and the women’s volleyball team earned a spot in the National Invitational Volleyball Championship. Now, the athletic department is rallying around women’s golf just as it did for those programs.
“Within the department, we had other coaches say that they would step up and support,” Miller said, “because they know how important it is to grow the brand of Western Carolina University and Catamount Athletics but also supporting each other because winners support winners.”
Meet the 12-team men’s field in the inaugural National Golf Invitational.
The 13-team men’s field is set for the inaugural National Golf Invitational, a new postseason collegiate event scheduled May 18-21 at Ak-Chin Southern Dunes Golf Club in Maricopa, Arizona.
Presented in partnership with Golfweek, the 2023 Men’s National Golf Invitational will feature 13 college teams competing in a 54-hole stroke-play tournament.
The teams in the field are: Arkansas State, Ball State, George Washington, Oral Roberts, Penn State, Santa Clara, Stetson, Texas State, Troy, Utah Valley, Valparaiso, Washington State and Wyoming.
“I can’t even begin to explain how excited I am for this and how long I have been dreaming of hosting this event. To have a host in Ak-Chin Southern Dunes Golf Club and a staff that shares that same energy is going to take this event to the next level,” Ringler said. “Growing up a big basketball fan, combined with my passion for college golf, helped bring to life the NIT of college golf in the NGI. It is going to be something I look forward to each May.
“Most importantly, college golf is more than ready for this type of postseason event. So many schools put so many resources into their college golf programs and having this opportunity to play in a postseason event is something a lot more teams can realistically aim for.”
In May 2022, the NCAA announced it would allow schools to play in one season-ending event, similar to college basketball’s NIT. By July 2022, the inaugural National Golf Invitational was created in a partnership between Golfweek and Ak-Chin Southern Dunes, with Golfweek’s Lance Ringler serving as the Invitational’s tournament director. A committee determined the invitation-only field using both the Golfweek/Sagarin and Golfstat rankings, while also considering teams who had strong regular seasons.
“Over five years ago, some great friends and I were sitting around brainstorming about how this tournament could be a game changer. Partnering with Lance and Golfweek has made this dream a reality,” Ak-Chin Southern Dunes general manager Brady Wilson said in a release. “As a former basketball coach, I can’t wait to make Ak-Chin Southern Dunes Golf Club the Madison Square Garden of college golf. We look forward to creating lifelong memories and experiences for all these student-athletes.”
